thrift-nano

A thrift compiler and library for tiny computers

The idea

Apache Thrift is an excellent way to generate services and messages for communication between different systems. Thrift so nice, I want to use it everywhere. The problem is that some of the systems I work with are really small and thrift doesn't support small computers very well. I need something like c_glib but glib is just too fat to fit on some computers (something like stm32 or a small arduino). The goal of this project is to provide 2 additional generators and a library that will fit on a computer with 256k flash. The generators it should include are:

1. A simple struct generator. This generator will not support any standard thrift protocols and will not support optional values.
2. A more standard struct generator. This generator will create structs that may be written to standard thrift protocols/transports.

The library should support including only those transports/protocols/services required at compile time.

Roadmap

1. Create a small thrift library that will support all thrift types and the binary and compact protocols. These protocols should be compiled out by default and only included with -DTHRIFT_NANO_PROTOCOL_<BINARY|COMPACT>
2. Create a generator to generate simple structs.
3. Create a generator to generate thrift compatible structs.
4. Implement more thrift features like services. These features should still require inclusion with preprocessor macros.

Building

./build.sh

OR

mkdir build && cd build && cmake ../ && make

Examples

• Example arduino serial reader: https://github.com/markrileybot/thrift-nano/wiki/Example-Arduino-Serial-Reader
• Example stm32f4 serial reader/writer: https://github.com/markrileybot/stm32f4-thrift

Merging

I'll merge features into my thrift fork as I complete them